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Comment by umvi | Hacker News Reader

Vim is like Dvorak. The cognitive burden for remembering which key maps to what is high unless you use it 24/7.

Your problem with Vim is that you don't grok vi. [0]

I agree with you that if you don't use a specialist tool 24/7 you'll be slow, but that is expected vi optimizes for expert users not for novice users.

In the same way that if I don't use Photoshop and then just want to do something simple in it, it's going to take me a lot of time and am probably going to forget how to do it because I don't use it enough.

0 - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1218390/what-is-your-mos...

I have a friend who used to use Vi(m) with his Dvorak keyboard at home, and Emacs with his qwerty keyboard at work. He considered it an exercise for keeping his brain sharp. I don't think he still does it, but maybe.

Vim on Dvorak is insane, imho.

Why do you feel that Vim on Dvorak is insane?

Motion in Vi is based on treating the home row of the keyboard as arrow keys. H, J, K, and L are left, down, up, and right. They aren't mnemonics, and so scrambling them around (Dvorak) is just doubly confusing.

Oh, huh, never considered that a real issue. I've used Vim on Dvorak for years, and use hljk for motion.

It's nice that jk are adjacent on Dvorak, and hl are conveniently placed as well.

Can confirm, I use Dvorak and vim without issues. I find myself not using hjkl very often though, since I can usually use another movement to get where I want to go, so it's really not an issue.

Using it 3/2 is probably enough...

It's actually not that hard:

The formula: number(Optional) action movement

Examples:

2 dl - delete two characters right

dw - delete a word

yb - copy back a word

y/foo - copy to the search foo

4cw - change the next four words

actions: yank(copy, delete, change)

movements: /(search), t(til character), f(to character), many many others (l, h, j, k, *, #, T, F)

Combine as you see fit.

`action [number] movement` also works, and makes more sense to my brain.

Does anyone use Vim on a Dvorak keyboard?

I use vim with colemak.

Funny you ask. While you were writing, I posted about a friend of mine who did that in a sibling message.

Yeah. It's really not too bad. It's certainly a little bit better if you take the ~4-10 lines to reconfigure a couple of keys. I map dhtn to hjkl and move d to j, n to l. It's pretty natural after that.

I used dvorak for a bit. I didn't remap HJKL, since JK were still beside each other, and H was to the left of L (albeit, not on the same row).

In terms of transferring Vim 'motor memory' from a qwerty layout to a dvorak layout, IMO it meant focussing more on an added indirection of "which letters" rather than "which fingers where".

I did for a long time and I found the switch to be painless. I then replaced most of my daily used software with Emacs.

I do, and it works well. I tend to use movements other than hjkl for moving around, so that doesn't bother me too much. I don't remap anything, and my config is pretty bare.

I use it 4-8/5. Works out OK

Just use it a perfect 5/7

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